Inside my head..

I wonder if the Chinese play the “burping the alphabet” game?

Wijacking

Or more to the point, Wardiving.
My children’s school is bounded by 2 streets perpendicular to the street the school is on. After dropping them off, I move down one of these streets to a road that travels down the edge of the bay. Along this street there are 3 wireless networks. Only 1 is secure.

Along the road I drive home from work, as in between work and home, there are 5 different wireless networks, including the one next door to work. Mitre10Mega’s is secure, as is Concut’s, but another called “default” and another with no name, other than the box displayed when windows can’t display a character, are unsecure.
The 5th, my own ad-hoc network is not secure, but you can’t secure an ad-hoc connection. Fortunately, you need to be in my driveway to connect, and, before you even think about it SW, all my network shares are password protected.

default

People really shouldn’t install hardware and leave it at the defaults.
I am currently posting this from my ipaq, via a wireless link to a nearby network.
Who owns the network? No idea. But I’ve been using it all day, and it’s called ‘default’.

Funny the way terminology works

There’s a particular type of component in electronics called a BGA. BGA stands for Ball Grid Array, and describes the way this “package” as they are called, is connected to a PCB - ie with small bits of solder. These can get very fine in pitch, ie distance from pad to pad, like 0.4mm.
Now, there is a rule of thumb that says the land (pad) for the solder ball (ball grid array) should be no larger than the ball itself.
I’m waiting for an engineer to ask what sizes pads he should use for a BGA, so I can say with a totally straight face “What size are your balls in your package?”